Photo of the Day

It is July 4, 1861.

Lincoln has been in office for four months.

Lincoln delivers his first inaugural address, March 4, 1861.

Eleven states have seceded from the Union,

formed the Confederate States of America,

Mass meeting endorsing secession, Charleston, SC, 1860.

selected a provisional president,

adopted a constitution,

The Jefferson Davis inauguration in Montgomery, Alabama, Februaruy 18, 1861.

established a seat of government in Richmond, Virginia,

seized federal arsenals

and fired on Fort Sumter.

Fort Sumter flies the Confederate flag on April 15, 1861, the day after the commander’s surrender.

Lincoln responded militarily,

calling for the marshaling of 75,000 federal troops,

ordering the blockade of Southern ports

and suspending habeas corpus along key rail corridors in Maryland.

In the past weeks, two small military skirmishes have taken place in Virginia.

Artist Thomas Nast’s painting of New York’s 7th Regiment’s departure for the war on April 19, 1861. The regiment is shown as it marched down Broadway beneath the Fort Sumter flag in review before the fort’s commander, Major Robert Anderson.

So, on this day Lincoln sends a message to a special session of Congress

explaining his actions

and asking for appropriations sufficient to support

a significant military response to the Confederate insurrection.

The Capitol Building was undergoing a major expansion in 1861.

Using terms he’d later repeat in Gettysburg,

Lincoln makes clear the conflict roiling the nation

is not a fight with another nation,

but an unconstitutional internal rebellion

which threatens the fundamental principles of representative democracy.

Handwritten draft: “[Refering to the Revolutionary War] Surely each man has as strong a notion now to preserve our liberties, as each had then to establish them.”

From Lincoln’s message:

[T]his issue embraces more than the fate of these United States.

It presents to the whole family of man the question whether a constitutional republic, or democracy--a government of the people by the same people--can or can not maintain its territorial integrity against its own domestic foes.

It presents the question whether discontented individuals, too few in numbers to control administration according to organic law in any case, can always, upon the pretenses made in this case, or on any other pretenses, or arbitrarily without any pretense, break up their government, and thus practically put an end to free government upon the earth.

Confederate soldiers captured on the Gettysburg battlefield, July 1863.

This is essentially a people's contest.

On the side of the Union it is a struggle for maintaining in the world that form and substance of government whose leading object is to elevate the condition of men; to lift artificial weights from all shoulders; to clear the paths of laudable pursuit for all; to afford all an unfettered start and a fair chance in the race of life.

Sgt. Major Christian Fleetwood, Medal of Honor recipient.

]T]his is the leading object of the Government for whose existence we contend.

School for formerly enslaved people established in Arlington, Virginia, during the Civil War.

I am most happy to believe that the plain people understand and appreciate this.

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I’ll see you tomorrow.

— Brenda